This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.
All thought out this past week, the National Book Foundation released their long lists for the National Book Award, one list per day, ending with Fiction yesterday. Along with my usual reminder to use these lists and their backlists especially to help patrons in a variety of ways, I want to point out the breadth of categories for this award.
Because it has categories in Fiction, Nonfiction, Translated Literature, Poetry, and Young People's literature, the National Book Award can help an extremely wide range of readers by default.
As a resource, these longlists are extremely useful because of the work put in by the (human) staff at the National Book Foundation. Each category has an entire page that summarizes all of the nominees, even drawing connections between titles. These pages not only give us the longlist titles but also put them in context. This is work that cannot be replaced by AI and I am so grateful for it each and every year.
They also cap off each article for each category with a statement about the number of books that were considered and who the judges for that category are. Here are the direct links to those pages for 2026:
However, it is not just the range of categories, the nominees in these long lists are also among the most accesible of titles nominated for major awards. The fiction and nonfiction titles, as usual, are solid suggestions for a general audience, they are NOT overly literary or obtuse. And as usual the translated titles are excellent options, especially as interest in translated titles grow and our resources are not keeping up.
From top to bottom, the books listed here (click honorees at the top of the page to reveal the lists and judges) should be owned by every public library and handed out frequently to general readers.
Backlist access of nominees and winners is very easily accessible and pleasant to browse, here as well. Of course, because of the breadth of titles always considered, this backlist access is extremely helpful for displays and suggestions all year long.
Use the links above to explore the National Book Foundations' excellent web presence and make sure you have all of these titles in your collections.
And note, this is the big first award for 2026 titles. My annual attack of the bests lists is almost here. Start getting ready now.
